Gramden and The Empire

[rohiranh]

Hey these are 2 countries that are in a fantasy story im planning out, tell me what you think of the 1st rendition of the map, give me your opinion on how it looks, also I am looking for a name for the Empire, its a pseudo Chinese-Japanese Empire so I am looking for that type of name. Also trying to figure out how many continents/countries do I want to take part in my story. So far there are only 2 each with their own continent.

[gtwucla]

I think the look is good, I like the old timey feel of the map. Also the general shape of the continent/island looks organic. The rivers in the grey area in the east and the rivers coming from the mountains next to the Gramden wording should not split like that. Rivers should always feed into each other, unless its a delta or the river is split by a large river island and it comes back together (unless you have some supernatural reason for them splitting). What does the grey portion on the east side of the map indicate? I get the sense its either swamp land or a dead forest of some kind, is that right? Last thing, are you sure you want a city named Dresden? I think there's nothing wrong with using real world names, but Dresden seems to me to be too well known to use as a city name. Anyway, those are my first impressions.

[rohiranh]

Thank you gtwula for your appreciation of my map, I am glad that you like it. Thank you for your help on the rivers that will help me when I update the map, I am not really good on figuring out how bodies of water should look, and the grey part on the map is supposed to indicate a dead forest, and for the city named Dresden I just wanted to name it that but I probably will rename it to make it sound at least not as real world like and a little bit more fantasy. My main goal is to get the map to look as realistic as possible via geographical elements such as rivers, lakes, mountains. Thank You for your help.

[ChickPea]

Rohiranh, there's some info in this thread about how to place your rivers, though gtwucla has summarised it fairly well. Think of a tree and its branches. The tree trunk would represent the final outlet into the sea and the branches are the tributaries which feed into the 'trunk'. That's the basic idea anyway. Try to place your river sources in or near mountains and have them flow from there out towards the coasts.

There are many very knowledgeable people about this sort of thing around here, so if you have a specific question, just ask and I'll sure someone can help you (I only know the basic rules.)